OK, so what minor, very fixable flaws annoy you in many console/desktop video games?
Mine:
When I hit the Pause (Esc/Start/whatever) key during play, please turn off the sound track! I’m pausing because the gaddamn phone rang – please, don’t make me sprint to mute the TV/stereo before I can pick up the phone!
Please, please allow me to skip cutscenes. It’s just possible that I either a) am replaying a section of the game from a saved game because I missed some health/weapon pickups on the first go-around, or b) I’m just replaying the whole game, and I really hate that tedious cutscene. Whatever. Do I really need to watch the whole five-minute exposition video again? “hit <key> to skip” is a wonderful way to caption a cut scene.
That’s funny, I’m playing through GTA: Vice City right now and I wish the soundtrack kept playing when the game was paused!
Right there with you on skipping cutscenes… but I’d like to be able to pause them, too. At least two or three times in my life, crucial cutscenes have been interrupted by something. I remember the culmination of a FFVII marathon. I’m finally at some of the FMV at the end… and my mom comes down and starts talking questions about something. 70 hours of effort… toast. Grrr.
My biggest bitch is save points. I don’t see the value in having to go somewhere to save the game. If you need, for some reason, to start me at certain points when I reload, I can deal. But trekking somewhere just to save, then go back… why???
In 2005, it’s a bit absurd that we have so many counters and things in static position on the screen. I know that burn-in is ostensibly less of a problem now, especially with HDTV’s, but from an aesthetic standpoint, it’s kind of goofy. I’d simply like to see game desginers come up with better ways to integrate the types of on-screen information - health info, time limits, and other stats. Perhaps they would disappear until pertinent (a health counter that appears when you get injured, stays for 5 secs, then disappears) or something.
Also, more of a marketing thing, but I really wish games would use actual game footage for TV commercials, trailers, and advertising pics. Since FMV, it seems that they exclusively use footage from the rendered cutscenes in the games for all advertising promotions.
Yes! Endless times, I’ve gotten unexpectedly to the end of a level, and we enter The Land of Cutscene Exposition. And if you miss some vital tidbit, you’re screwed on the next level.
And, of course, the phone rings. Or I need a potty break really bad. Or whatever.
But I can’t just pause the cutscene and do my business – I have to watch the whole thing or miss it. If I’m not there when the video ends, my character is probably facing Death while I’m in the 'loo. Sweet.
I’m going back to 80s classic arcade games here since that’s what I am more familiar with. In Pac-Man, it gave you an additional life at 10,000 points. After that, that’s all you got. For a skilled player, this was relatively very early in the game, usually earned by the second or third level. I wish it would have given out additional lives at say, 25,000 points and then every 25,000 points thereafter. Also, it lacked a high scores table, which by then was a common feature on most games of that era.
Actually, it’s rather Ironic, because after playing Generals and Call of Duty recently, I’ve been rather annoyed that the cutscenes and trailors are little more then recorded game footage. It’s like they couldn’t be bothered to put together a decent cutscene or trailor on their own.
I don’t mind using game footage, but using nothing but game footage just seems lazy to me.
There’s always c) you’re watching it for the fifth time because Seymour Motocrisis keeps whipping your butt immediately afterwards.
Oh, and note to Square–I can’t stand your mini-games. I especially can’t stand that I always have to play them at some point to finish my game. And it’s really annoying when I get stuck because of one of your stupid mini-games that I can’t stand to play more than once, which are always the ones I don’t get through the first time. The card games are alright, but please please please drop the rest? I like Final Fantasy becuase it’s not an action game–stop screwing that up!
You’ll be happy to know that Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2 does fade out its action and health counters when you aren’t doing anything more than running around. Hopefully it’ll be a trendsetter.
Speaking as a Professional Game Programmer (oooh), would you rather that we take $1,000,000 and pay it to some studio to make FMVs? Or would you prefer that we hire 3 or 4 more artists, designers and programmers, to, gee, make the game better?
Sure, some games don’t have particular budgetary constraints… but the vast majority do, and FMV ain’t free.
Any game where your character, who regularly crushes demonic hordes and hacks through armies of evil, can’t get over a small rock in the road or a vine stretched across the path. :smack:
It doesn’t have to be FMV. Some of my favorite FPS’s use the Ingame engine for cutscenes(NOLF1/2, AVP).
No, what I’m saying is, If you’re going to make a cutscene, at least take the time to make one, and not show some random ingame footage that I’ve probably already seen while playing it.
Even better. You’re a video game hero who has 9000 HP and/or mega armor that routinely deflects stuff that would kill the average guy a million times over. You routinely dispatch hundreds of bad guys in a single level.
And then eventually, somebody hits you on the head with a blackjack and you go out cold or stabs you with a knife and you slowely begin to bleed to death.
The only onscreen information in Primal was her HP which only appeared when she was hit or you healed her. I thought it was really annoying. YMMV, I guess.
I’m not much of a fan of games where you can only move the camera so much.
As far as non game mechanics, I don’t like it when you spend the game fighting giant robots, dragons, and even guards with guns and in the cinema scenes your characters freeze and won’t fight back when somebody points a gun at them.
If there’s a time played counter, pause it when I am in pause mode. I want to know how much time I spent playing, not how much time I spent with the disc in the machine.
Make “mute when paused” a user-selectable option.
Cutscene best practices:
Letterbox them to let me know I cannot take action.
Make them skippable.
Make them pausable.
Put activated cutscenes in a menu that I can easily reach and replay.